This post is in the Eldritch Icons project which will weave a narrative to supplant the 13 Icons of the Dragon Empire with more sinister icons born of Weird Fiction. See Part 1 for an introduction to Mordiggian, the Great Ghoul.

Plot Hooks

All that Remains: A party member’s hometown (pick someone who hasn’t had a focus in a few sessions, or a hometown shared by multiple party members) is the latest to be visited by Mordiggian’s Jackal Priests. They’re digging up the graveyard where families of the town have been buried for generations. Will the target’s friends and loved ones disappear into the gullet of the ghoul?

Bearding the Lich King: For Champion or Epic players with an axe to grind against the Lich King, this is your time to shine. Take the fight to the Necropolis. Whether you temporarily ally with Mordiggian and his forces (unlikely players ever speak to the Great Ghoul, negotiate through a senior priest, Atrax) or simply take advantage of the confusion to mount your own attack (in which case you’re probably dealing with occasional fights with Mordiggian’s forces unless you at least reach a truce), you wend your way into the heart of the Necropolis and stab at the heartphylactery of the Lich King himself.

Nota Bene, Lich King’s phylactery unlikely to be found inside actual Lich King. It might be hidden deep within the Necropolis — the only place he knows he can keep it safe — or somewhere else. But one reason the Lich King has been so hard to kill is that he and the phylactery must be destroyed in the same instant. That takes coordination when fighting off waves of skeletons, vampires, and skeleton vamp…I’m getting ahead of myself.

Rebuilding the Wards: Every sentient mortal from farmers to Icons has lived in the shadow of the Lich King for Ages. All fought death in their own ways, but some fought the death that lies beyond death. Some found the secret to keep the Lich King’s bony fingers off a particular graveyard. Something about the Priestess protected Santa Cora. Some everyday cemeteries remain untouched due to wards crafted ages ago, wards which never seemed to work elsewhere, or whose magical secrets were lost. A party focused on magic or secret knowledge may wish to uncover a magic ritual to stop Mordiggian. What kept him out of the world until now? Can it be found in the Priestess’s or Archmage’s library? Is there a secret among the dwarves, masters of runes?

Or see the Priestess’s posts for Something Rotten Under Santa Cora. Santa Cora’s necropolis rivals that of the Lich King and had offered protection for those buried therein. With her protection removed, it’s an enormous source of power. Whichever faction seizes it first will have a tremendous advantage in this struggle.

Mordiggian vs. the Necromancers

Just as their relationship with the Lich King greatly affects those playing Necromancers (13 True Ways, p.79), so does this shift in power and priorities. Mordiggian considers the dead his provender. Sure, he’s not munching on old bones, but it’s the principle of the thing when you’re raising up skeleton mooks or calling his ghouls to your bidding. Perhaps he overlooks this if you have a negative relationship with the Lich King or your conflicted relationship has turned sour. He’s got bigger problems than a few necromancers.

For the GM, a Necromancer provides an avenue for introducing Mordiggian. After a fight, your summoned ghoul spits at you about his real master. Or a couple silver-masked priests meet you in the road and ask you kindly but firmly to mind your place. What’s in it for you? Mordiggian asks you to join him in the battle against the Lich King, promising favor or particular rewards the player’s been craving. Adventurers create a lot of corpses, after all. Or you could kill the priests and see what happens next.

Jackal-Headed Priests and Other Servitors

The stats for Jackal Priests are a bit of an experiment, although based on existing rules and stat blocks, so I’d love to hear your play experience of them.

Jackal Priests of Mordiggian

…heads and faces that were half anthropomorphic, half canine, and wholly diabolic. Also, they had taken off the fingerless gloves… Their curving talons gleamed in the bloody light like the hooks of darkly tarnished metal; their spiky teeth, longer than coffin nails, protruded from snarling lips. They closed like a ring of jackals… …screams of men were mingled with a growling as of jackals, a laughter as of hyenas…

Masked, robed, and gloved, Jackal Priests petrify townsfolk as they silently pass. But when the masks lift, the gloves come off, and the laughter begins, the blood of all but the most stalwart adventurers runs cold in their veins. And possibly on the ground. A 5th level Jackal Priest [Troop] has +8 Initiative. HP 90, AC 22, MD 19, PD 19.

Raking Claws +12 vs. AC — 15 damage.Natural 16+: If this is the priest’s first attack during their turn, they may make a death vision attack against the same target as a free action.

Death Vision +10 vs. MD (one nearby enemy) — Target takes 20 psychic damage each time it makes a nonbasic attack (save ends). Mordiggian absorbs the life essences of those he consumes. Death leaves a strong psychic impression. His priests draw on the deaths of loved ones, former companions, or those the target failed to protect, forcing the target to witness their last moments. If the target doesn’t have anyone like this in her past, other death impressions will do as well.Natural 16+: If this is the priest’s first attack during their turn and they are within melee range, they may make a raking claws attack against the same target as a free action.

Blood-Chilling Laughter +11 vs. MD — Target chooses to be stunned for one round or take 5 psychic damage per round (save ends)Limited use: Once per battle.

Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-Leggedy Beasties

Rather than calculate the number of Jackal Priests per character, use only one or two and fill the rest with ghoul-types from Bestiary, 96-98. A licklash, pusbuster (unless you’re like me and can’t psychologically handle that kind of thing) and a heaping handful of gravemeats make an excellent complement. If using ghasts, don’t include Hungry Howl unless you want a fight full of psychic attacks and unnerving sounds, in which case, go to!

Fungaloid

Bestiary, p.82. Hunters after corpses haunt deep, moist places. Some Fungaloids feel a kinship with Mordiggian. Both feed on death and transform it into something else. None of this keeping the dead around like the Lich King does, solid disposal. But this great ghoul had better not claim more than humanoids or they’ll have nothing to eat.

Haunted Skulls

Bestiary, p.108. The haunted skull represents a ghost bound to their world, either forcefully or through an inability to fade away. Mordiggian offers these pathetic creatures a bargain: when he defeats the Lich King, he will consume them and release them from their misery. All they must do in the meantime is fight for him. One might wonder why, if he takes such pity on them, he doesn’t release them right away. One might.

Skeletons

Actually no. Skeletons are too far gone. He’s not into that. Nor Liches. They have too much free will for a respectable corpse. He’d rather destroy them. Especially one of them. Vampires? Darling, vampires wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near a ghoul.

Zombies

13 True Ways, p.207. Mordiggian’s psychic lure pulls humanoid zombies to congregate wherever he is. When not engaged in battle, he readily devours them. They crave release but will fight to protect their only chance of escape. They may also prove useful in finding or following him.

Is Mordiggian the Lesser Evil?

I’d rather live in a world where a giant ghoul would safely devour me and keep my body free from the possible thrall of the Lich King. But is that what your players want? Mordiggian derives power from consuming corpses…do they want to be little more than batteries in the grand scheme? Perhaps they want their bodies to lie in consecrated Axis necropolises or to be consumed by flame on sacred altars in Horizon. Perhaps they long for the peace the Priestess offers or their religion preaches resurrection but only of whatever corpse remains. Maybe being eaten is just gross. Your players may recoil to find themselves fighting alongside armies of the Lich King, but perhaps it’s the only way to save their souls.

This post is in the Eldritch Icons project which will weave a narrative to supplant the 13 Icons of the Dragon Empire with more sinister icons born of Weird Fiction.

As the chill graveyard air touched their skin, the travelers quickened their stride. This graveyard, far from the well-minded heart of the Empire, had been left to decay and to him—the Lich King. When the first bereaved lover saw the silver-masked figures carrying off the body of his sweetheart, everyone called him deranged by grief. But reports spread of these stooped, robed, and gloved men—could they be called men if they could not be seen?— removing fresh corpses in the dead of night.

At first, stout family members resisted. Bleeding and slashed, they crawled back to town babbling of men with lupine faces and curved talons. It eventually became apparent that these strangers never killed the living (although some succumbed to their injuries), they only took the dead. For many, this was an acceptable bargain—would they not else have lost their loved one to the Lich King? And so, towns forewent burial and rituals developed to welcome these ministers of the dead, although with fear. But some resisted.

But Mordiggian? The moment the ghouls of the Dragon Empire heard his psychic call, they no longer belonged to the Lich King. They flocked, or loped, to find their new master. He gave them something beyond mindlessness and they repaid him by silently swarming over the dominions of their former lord. They ripped apart skeletons and devoured vampires. But, acting on his orders, neither Mordiggian’s reborn ghouls nor his jackal-headed ghoul-priests harm the living, unlike the Elk Queen’s frenzied Blood Druids, as long as they surrender their dead for the god’s feast.

With many of his outer strongholds fallen, the Lich King has barricaded himself in the Necropolis. Will the lich who has lasted so many ages hold his (under)ground? Or will ghouls at last suck the marrow of this icon’s bones?

Mordiggian, the Great Ghoul

Not until Zothique, Clark Ashton Smith’s Dying Earth, do we encounter “The Charnel God,” Mordiggian. The town of Zul-Bha-Sair lives in truce with their god. They allow his priests to bring their dead to his yawning temple. Families do not visit its black stone interior to participate in burial rites or funerary practices. And in return, what? Mordiggian saves them in the afterlife. He does not offer an abode for their souls but rather an eternal peace. For in a land rife with necromancers and malign forces, how else can the dead be safe than through total consumption, whether through cleansing fire or Mordiggian’s maw?

Through him, we are saved from corruption and the worm. Even as the people of other places devote their dead to the consuming flame, so we of Zul-Bha-Sair deliver ours to the god. Awful is the fane, a place of terror and obscure shadow untrod by the sun, into which the dead are borne by his priests and are laid on a vast table of stone to await his coming from the nether vault in which he dwells. No living men, other than the priests, have ever beheld him; and the faces of the priests are hidden behind masks of silver, and even their hands are shrouded, that men may not gaze on them that have seen Mordiggian.

As Great Old Ones go, Mordiggian is one you might not mind seeing move into your local charnel house. He won’t raise your loved ones to fight in his skeleton army or send a plague of ghouls to uproot your town. He’s patient, he’ll wait for you to come to him. But do not try to cheat him (are you listening, Necromancers?) or to withhold that which he’s claimed.

Go, for Mordiggian is a just god, who claims only the dead, and has no concern with the living. And we, the priests of Mordiggian, deal in our own fashion with those who would violate his law by removing the dead from the temple.

While some may welcome this change from the Lich King, those who have put great effort into mummificiation and other steps to protect the bodies of their kin won’t take kindly to this death-consuming force. Pockets of resistance will band against his encroachment. Magic-users will experiment with protection rites. Fighters will keep his priests at bay. But can you fight darkness made manifest?

As if compelled by another will than his own, the youth turned and saw the thing that had halted Narghai’s blow. Arctela and Abnon-Tha, pausing before the open door, were outlined against a colossal shadow that was not wrought by anything in the room. It filled the portals from side to side, it towered above the lintel — and then, swiftly, it became more than a shadow: it was a bulk of darkness, black and opaque, that somehow blinded the eyes with a strange dazzlement. It seemed to suck the flame from the red urns and fill the chamber with a chill of utter death and voidness. Its form was that of a worm-shapen column, huge as a dragon, its further coils still issuing from the gloom of the corridor; but it changed from moment to moment, swirling and spinning as if alive with the vortical energies of dark eons. Briefly it took the semblance of some demoniac giant with eyeless head and limbless body; and then, leaping and spreading like smoky fire, it swept forward into the chamber.

In pt. 2, I’ll give some plot hooks, more about Mordiggian’s priests, and ask whether there is a lesser of two evils here.

As an aside, there’s a reason these are taking a while—what some consider too long—between installments. It’s a combo of paid writing work which obviously takes precedence over my writing-for-fun, work for my professional life (I’m a journal editor and co-chair a professional committee and wrote a journal article this fall, plus other stuff I can’t bring up here), a solid two weeks sick, and some real crap going down in my family this year which has been so emotionally stressful that whatever free time I get I’ve mostly spent trying to do therapeutic things. Sometimes writing is good therapy, sometimes it’s not and I’m afraid it hasn’t been lately. I am going to do my best to keep on with the project as I can…I wish it were a straight line, but life hasn’t been a straight line at all.

If you’re more a fan of Trail/GUMSHOE, you can back “Just the Fall” to get the hardcover (and PDF, of course, because Pelgrane!) Fall of Delta Green and still pick up PDFs or print copies of other d100 Delta Green rewards as add-ons. Or if you’re backing the d100 game, there are a few tiers which include the PDF (I’d list them, but some may be added so check the KS page) and you can add on either the PDF ($25) or the Hardcover + PDF ($50) no matter what level you back. There is no PDF-only option for Fall, although you could back the Kickstarter at the $1 level and add it on for $25.

But you probably didn’t click this to read details about a Kickstarter, so on to the Q&A!

Ruth: What will Delta Green GUMSHOE look like? Will it be a Trail hack, a hybrid of Trail and Delta Green, or something else?

KH: The goal for FALL OF DELTA GREEN is to make a game that’s maximally interoperable with TRAIL OF CTHULHU and NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS while still adapting every mechanic and every characteristic element of the DELTA GREEN RPG to GUMSHOE. How close I can get to that goal depends on my skill and on the final form of the DGRPG, but I’ll bet I can get us at least 90% of the way there. But the Bonds mechanics alone mean it will play and feel differently from TRAIL or NBA.

Ruth: Why did you choose to focus on the Fall of Delta Green period instead of, say, its early post-Innsmouth missions or its WWII era? Do the 1960s lend themselves especially well to Investigative-style gaming or did you want dibs on the decade for its world events?

KH: Part of it was just not wanting to step on any toes or revisit old terrain. The early years of P Section/DG are pretty much already TRAIL country; there’s a WWII DG book in progress already (and there has been since the 1990s) so I didn’t want to try to insert my game into that ongoing process. Shane and Dennis offered me the Fifties when we first started talking about me doing a GUMSHOE DELTA GREEN book, but dramatically it makes more sense to look at the hubris and nemesis of DG in the Sixties. Plus, I think more players and GMs can think of more ways to insert themselves into the 1960s, and especially into Vietnam. So that was my counter-offer: Sixties DELTA GREEN, climaxing at the program’s self-immolation in Cambodia. Shane and Dennis liked the idea, liked my pitch, so that’s what we agreed on.

I don’t know that the Sixties are especially investigative per se — part of the GUMSHOE ethos is that you can play investigative RPGs anywhen from the fantasy past to the space-operatic future. But the Sixties do have a lot of flavor to them, not least being the era in which the WASP ascendancy that HPL identified with began to lose control in America. If you wanted a live-action version of Lovecraft’s imagined apocalypse, the Sixties are a good approximation.

Ruth: Following on that, what kinds of horrors do you expect players to confront using Fall? Will you be creating any of your own shadowy organizations or will it be an adaptations of ones we already know in the DG-verse?

KH: I’ll be sticking pretty close to the existing DG universe for obvious reasons. I’ve already contributed one or two things to the new DG background, and I’ll probably do a little foreshadowing of those in FALL — expect to see the lloigor, for example. Also, I need to revisit the evil societies Greg and I put in CULT OF TRANSCENDENCE and see if any of them are particularly fear-forward in the Sixties. But there’s lots of opportunities for one-off Manson-style Mythos cults; that’s kind of what the Sixties are all about, after all, opening the doors of perception and tuning into a higher order of being than boring old straight society.

Ruth: Given ArcDream’s release and whatever your draft looks like, do you think it’ll be easy to stat the same character in both games?

KH: That’s part of the design brief, and I’ll have complete character (and monster) conversion back-and-forth rules and advice in an appendix.

Ruth: And are you, like ArcDream, getting rid of Library Use? (I actually applaud their reasons for doing so, as a librarian I think library use is definitely a skill but it’s also a subskill of being really good at whatever field you’re good at)

KH: The final ability list remains in flux. I’ll likely begin with the DG skill list, but this is a GUMSHOE game first and foremost, so I may wind up leaving a Research ability in the mix. Part of the GUMSHOE ethos is that multiple abilities provide multiple roads to a clue — Research and Bureaucracy or Research and History are more powerful in terms of game design than just the two latter abilities without it.

And I had a final question for Simon Rogers of Pelgrane Press, who will be publishing Fall. Is this a one-time thing or will we see more?

SR: We have the rights in the contract for a supplement, which will most likely be adventures.

Simon added that there will be a pre-order available some time after the Kickstarter, although Kickstarter backers will get their copies first.

Again, you can back Just The Fall or choose it as an add-on if you’re backing the mail Delta Green game. What you do with this information is up to you…but if you don’t want shoggoths in America’s nuclear bases, well, I trust you to make the right decision.

With 16 days to go, the Delta Green Kickstarter has skyrocketed to a sanity-shattering $170,000 (she says, betting they get ~$1100 of backing before this posts tomorrow morning). Since the game came out a good 20+ years ago, it’s been the go-to for what I might call “dark action mythos” (is “dark mythos” redundant?). It was my introduction to Cthulhu gaming, so I was very excited to see the Kickstarter.

This entirely rewritten version will be familiar to any Call of Cthulhu player, but it’s a standalone ruleset designed for the game, not a direct hack of Call of Cthulhu. The Kickstarter will have two entire core games. The familiar d100 Delta Green from ArcDream and a GUMSHOE, 1960s-focused Fall of Delta Green from Pelgrane Press. As the Illuminerdy’s Mythos Correspondent, I’ve done interviews with designers of both books. First up is the classic Delta Green. Its Kickstarter levels cover everything from the basic Agent Handbook PDF to a full set of scenarios, settings, and the larger Case Officer’s Handbook. The best part? Whichever core game you back, you can add on PDFs from the other game or anything in the Add on Rewards Menu. If you only back for $1, you can choose whatever you want off that menu for fulfillment.

Ruth: Call of Cthulhu has gone through two editions since 1st ed Delta Green came out in 1994. The DG 1st ed describes itself as “a sourcebook for modern-day Call of Cthulhu roleplaying,” but the current KS describes its break-away from the current CoC. What would you consider the essential elements of this edition of Delta Green, the core reasons someone would play it vs. cook up a modern CoC scenario?

SI: As much as we love Call of Cthulhu — and it’s the favorite game of every member of the Delta Green team — there are some important differences in tone and style between Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green.

Compared to Call of Cthulhu 6th Edition, Delta Green’s rules are streamlined to make any situation fast and easy to resolve.

In Delta Green, investigative scenes are often diceless, so you don’t run into the inevitable trouble of the GM calling for a roll to find a piece of information and then having to improvise when the roll fails. Dice in Delta Green represent unpredictable situations, so they are reserved for dealing with unpredictable characters and trying to survive a crisis.

And action scenes in Delta Green are suspenseful and brutal. Whether you’re running for your life or standing to fight, it’s over fast. That keeps those moments breathless and scary, and it lets you get to the parts that we think are more interesting: the aftermath. The repercussions. The prices you pay when you go looking for terror.

Those consequences come up in Sanity, which is familiar to any Call of Cthulhu player, and in Bonds, which are a new part of Delta Green. Bonds are relationships that can keep you sane, but they deteriorate if you lean on them without giving anything back. With Bonds we explore not just your personal well-being but what your actions do to the human world around you.

GS: Mechanically, it’s very similar. It’s a variant on BRP with a bit more emphasis on (1) personal psychological and emotional degradation and (2) weapons of warfare, as is in keeping with Delta Green’s themes and focus. I think the reason you’d use this rather than cook up your own scenario is that the scenarios for DG are made by experienced professionals and you, maybe, don’t have the time for it. This isn’t meant to sound snooty about RPG home cooking, by the way. I believe that a scenario built with your characters in mind can be uniquely gripping. But someone who wants to run a game and doesn’t have lots of free hours to prep it may want to just grab something, and these scenarios have the benefit of decades of experience behind their design.

The other difference is that it gives a strong, plausible rationale for why investigators with the abilities required to confront these mysteries keep finding them. That framework, in turn, gives you a way to keep having adventures. Continuity can really deepen a player’s connection to a character, as can suspension of disbelief. It’s a lot easier to believe that a character is encountering all this weird stuff because experts are watching for it and sending her, than it is to accept that she just keeps stumbling into it.

Ruth: What games that have been published since the 1st edition have influenced your re-visioning of Delta Green? Have there been any large influences or have the adaptations primarily derived from reflection and retooling as you developed adventures and supplemental material?

SI: Pelgrane Press’s Gumshoe games Trail of Cthulhu and Night’s Black Agents, absolutely. It’s no coincidence that we brought Ken Hite onto our team, and we aim to put Robin Laws to work for us soon. Those games did a fantastic job teaching GMs to focus on the goal of the game: to lure the players to horror. The way we approach using skills outside combat and pursuits isn’t exactly like Robin’s approach to clues in Gumshoe, but it was a straight-up inspiration.

And Unknown Armies, of course. You’ll notice Greg Stolze here, too. He and John Scott Tynes (also from Delta Green) did a fantastic job breaking mental trauma down into discrete types with different effects on characters. That insight is a key part of Delta Green’s Sanity rules.

GS: I can only speak for myself, but I think the progress of history and society changed this Delta Green more than (say) the release of Exalted or something. Again, the mechanics aren’t a major departure from BRP. Delta Green is different because when it originally came out, the idea of a government agency spying on every phone call everyone made sounded like science fiction. Now it’s a serious concern. The idea that American troops might engage in torture? Well, sure, a few rogue elements maybe, but torture as a policy that was handed down with guidelines, something where millions were spent determining the right way to do it? That sounded sort of paranoid in the 1990s. Now, unfortunately, it’s just the world.

Ruth: Will the Case Officer’s Handbook contain updated information on Majestic-12, The Fate, and other classic big bads of the world of Delta Green? What about new ones, will they be in the Handbook or added via tiers (I see “The Children of Atlach-Nacha,” for example, but am unsure if it’s a parallel group)?

SI: Some of those feature prominently in the Case Officer’s Handbook. Others are only sidebars explaining why they’re past-tense. Majestic-12 is still around, but it and Delta Green have been warped and changed by their contact with each other. These days the scary Men in Black with orders to torture and kill aren’t the enemy. They’re you. What do you do?

Ruth: Pelgrane’s going to be doing a lot in the 60s with Fall of Delta Green. Do you intend to keep your focus primarily contemporary or will you be going back to Delta Green’s greatest hits/worst moments as an “official” organization?

SI: Right now we’re keeping our attention mostly on the current day. There’s a lot to explore.

But we want to do a Delta Green RPG dedicated to World War II as soon as we can. It’s been in development for a long time and we really look forward to finishing it.

Ruth: Lots of us have played or at least heard of Delta Green. But for those who’ve never played, what’s your brief pitch for new players–especially those who haven’t played Call of Cthulhu either?

GS: Delta Green is a serious, horrifying game that puts characters in very bleak situations and demands that they find the least-awful solution.

SI: Delta Green is about competent, brave men and women investigating terrible supernatural threats, saving others from them, and paying the price.

Want a Hollywood pitch? True Detective meets Breaking Bad, The Americans, and the Cthulhu Mythos. It’s suspenseful, creepy, scary, and bleak. Around the table, of course, it’s often blackly funny because of all that. But every Delta Green game is a horror story from beginning to end.

Compelling. Intriguing. Thorough. Open. Hella frustrating because I can think of 5 different ways I want to use it and don’t have time for any of them. It’s hard to come up with the right words for the Dracula Dossier Director’s Handbook because it is so many different things. On the surface, it’s one of the most thorough sources I’ve seen for an improvisational campaign.

The hook? Bram Stoker’s Dracula is actually a redacted after-action field report of a failed operation in which British agents tried to bring Dracula into the Crown’s service. The redacted version was released as disinformation, but a real copy (Dracula Unredacted) has floated around the shadowy agency, Edom, for generations, collecting annotations. Each generation makes the same mistake—this time it will be different. Surely Dracula will help us fight the Nazis. Surely Vlad the Impaler’s time fighting Muslims means he’ll be willing to fight Al-Qaeda for us.

Right now? It’s going horribly wrong. Dracula is awake. He’s out. He may be helping Edom against Al-Qaeda, but they’re tolerating atrocities and abominations that should make any halfway decent human send Dracula straight to hell. When that halfway decent human, a MI-6 agent outside of the Edom conspiracy (code name “Hopkins”), comes across it, she adds her own horrified annotations and tries to get the unredacted copy into the hands of someone who will use it for good. And that, perhaps, is how your players end up with it. (Like so much in this book, it’s quite open.) Suddenly, you’ve got a target on your back and your neck as both Edom and Dracula come gunning—fanging?— for you. The concept could integrate into an ongoing Night’s Black Agents campaign or be the kickoff for a new one.

In reading the Director’s Handbook, I came to see the ideal campaign as a quasi-book club. Meet for 4 hours at a time, spend 30-60 minutes discussion the book, give the Director a few time to put sticky notes in relevant pages, and launch into gameplay. As someone who’s read Dracula 4+ times and is casually reading Unredacted, this is pretty much my dream gaming experience. But as a potential Director, managing to get my gaming group (myself included) to meet regularly is hard enough, let alone throwing in the book club element. And while I’m good at improvising around a known setting, the thought of incorporating any of the 100+ people/organizations/locations/objects into something at the last moment felt overwhelming since I just don’t have that much experience doing it.

However. The improvisational book club concept isn’t the only way to use the Director’s Handbook, and the authors know it, giving us…

Structure in the Book-ends

When reading this I went through a bizarre cycle of eager, intrigued, appreciative, and overwhelmed. The first and last few sections were critical for me in sorting out these feelings and figuring out what I could do with the info. The writers don’t just dump awesome ideas on you (at times I felt like the dog in this video), they provide a good deal of guidance for turning that into good games. Like a regular Night’s Black Agents campaign, you use the conspyramid. And unless you’ve decided to play as Edom agents and on Edom’s team, you’ll also be dealing with attacks from Edom, who get a second conspyramid. The book provides Dossier-specific overviews of how you might use elements from the book’s rich middle section to populate the both the Edom and Dracula conspyramids as you play.

In my opinion, the best way to read the book is to start with “Opening the Dossier” through “Opposition Forces” and skip 180 pages or so to “Scenario Spines.” This section and the “Capstones” and “Campaign Frames” that follow are the key to avoiding getting a mental stomach ache in the feast of plot hooks and ideas in the middle. While you could simply skip forward from “Opening the Dossier,” the sections exploring the possibilities in the 1894 originals and their descendants and getting into Edom, Dracula, and other factors in play are exactly enough background material to put you in the right headspace as you read spines, capstones, and campaign frames.

Once I’d read this part, everything seemed more feasible. I had a better idea of how I could do an improvisational-ish campaign while keeping it manageable for me as a Director. And if that’s still not your wheelhouse, you can just use the spines and campaign frames as is, perhaps populating or improving them for your GMing style with people/places/things from the middle. The Edom Files collection that’s coming out soon will have more of these.

But, frankly, it’s also…

Worth It for the Middle Alone

Even if you’re not planning to run a straight-up game involving Dracula Unredacted, the middle part of this book is a must-have for any Night’s Black Agents GM who wants to create their own adventures. You need locations? There are cities, castles, hotels, prisons, and more. You want a variety of organizations with a vampiric bent or connection? You get everything from mafia to shipping companies to charities. You want some kind of weird artifact for a one-shot or campaign? Well, there are 27 of those. Hell, you want establishing shots to use in an opener, a fight, a chase, a search for clues? They’ve got 14 of those and each has a paragraph on how to use it for all of those purposes.

And do you want people? The book provides 66 NPCs with a variety of professions, personalities, and uses. Like so much in the Handbook, each part of the middle section is full of options. Is this person working for Edom? Are they one of Dracula’s minions? Are they some kind of freelancer or ordinary person? The answer for each is “yes and this is what it would look like.” The authors coordinated a variety of creators to write many of these entries, with the result a delightful variety of ideas.

The middle is parts monster manual, parts gaming supplement, and one of the most comprehensive, inspirational reference products I’ve encountered. Even if you have no interest in bringing Dracula to your NBA game (did I mention how flexible this book is? It even touches on running Dracula Dossier games without Dracula), this part is worth having. To top it all off, the index for this section goes beyond the basics and provides what we in the library business call “multiple avenues for discovery.”

It’s All True

As what would be a sidebar if this were a gaming book, one of my absolute favorite parts of the Handbook is its complete historical accuracy. …ok, its surprising level of historical accuracy. When I first got my hands on the copy that was released with the Kickstarter, I started doing research—they couldn’t be telling the truth about the Icelandic pref…oh, nope, that’s true… Well what about the timing of the earthquakes? Oh. Yep. You can tell Hite and Hanrahan are history buffs and they’ve shared Tweets about other little things that fit a little too perfectly with the project. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but I thrill whenever I work coincidentally-perfect reality into my own historical scenarios and I love seeing it here.

They also provide very helpful sidebars with accurate information. Do you need to know who was in charge of the Abwehr in 19__? Good news, there’s a table with his name along with the NKVD head, British agency heads, etc. Need the name of the real Lord Godalming? Here are three British Viscounts who died in 1894 and their heirs…and how the one without an heir might be the most fun to play with anyway because ___.

Remember the part where they brought in other creators? As a final hook for our fine readers and a note about potential conflicts of interest—Kennon, Elsa, and I wrote for parts of the Dossier project. Kennon and Elsa’s material was incorporated into the Director’s Handbook, which is why I’m the one reviewing it, whereas my scenario, Blood Coda, will be in the Edom Files one-shot compendium.

So, do you want this book? Are you a) a current or aspiring Night’s Black Agents GM, b) someone interested in running a vampire/Dracula game in another system, c) or someone who loves the original Dracula novel and conspiracy thrillers? For A, good grief yes. For B, yes because, while this is definitely meant for Night’s Black Agents/GUMSHOE, you could adapt everything but the occasional stat block for any other game in which you’re going up against vamps and especially Dracula. And for C, from what I’ve read so far I’d recommend Dracula Unredacted (but yeah, you probably don’t need the Director’s Handbook) even to non-gamers who love the original Dracula and conspiracy and want to see what was pulled out of drafts and creative brains.

The Director’s Handbook and rest of the Dracula Dossier can be pre-ordered from Pelgrane Press with immediate PDFs and print books coming soon. I reviewed the PDF copy and cannot wait to get my grubby little hands on my hardcover so I can flip around and fill it with sticky notes. You can check out a preview PDF with a full table of contents and some samples from the middle section which show off just how good it is.

In their newest release, Pelgrane Press combines the 2012 ENnie gold winning Trail adaptation/variant Cthulhu Apocalypse with its two supplemental campaign frameworks and a set of eight additional scenarios. The premise of Cthulhu Apocalypse? We have failed. Whatever happens, happens, and your Investigators are survivors of a catastrophe that’s wiped out 99% of Earth’s population.

Its broad engine allows for nearly-limitless catastrophes (more on that in a moment). The campaign framework takes place across two books in a Britain under siege by either Triffid-like white flowers or Deep Ones. The eight final scenarios take place separately, though they could be worked into the overall campaign framework. Because it’s a multi-part book, I’m going to review the sections separately before wrapping up with my overall thoughts.

The Apocalypse Machine

Premise of the Apocalypse Machine? We lost. We failed. Maybe it was a Mythos entity. Maybe it was ourselves. Maybe it was a natural disaster. “On November 2, 1936, the world died.” Maybe it drowned in a new great flood. Maybe it suffered a catastrophic nuclear explosion. Maybe reality tore. The Apocalypse Machine is both an extensive source of setting material and a revisioning of the Trail abilities to fit this new world with its new needs and rules.

The machine has three axes: Disasters, Causes, and Casualties.

Disasters – What actually happened that fateful day or the year leading up to it? Was it floods, earthquakes, or cold? Did reality tear? Did a nuke go off? Each disaster tells us what the world might look like now, includes things that could be damaged, and lists possible causes.

Causes – There are only three causes: nature, humans, and monsters. But the machine lays out options and nuances. More than one can work in concert, of course. Importantly, if monsters cause the apocalypse, they need not be the monsters the adventurers are facing. Monsters are opportunistic.

Casualties – When the world broke, what was broken? Is there no more water? Is there nothing but water? The machine outlines ways things may be affected.

It also has settings, “dials,” for:

How humanity is responding. Are we “The Road” or “Day of the Triffids”?

When it happened. We know the apocalypse’s date, but what’s today’s date?

How Weird it gets. Do we just toss in some monsters or has reality entirely changed?

Adrenaline. Are we hopeless survivors on the infinite beach or are we giving the Mi-Go both barrels?

I found the Apocalypse Machine engaging in its versatility. It allows for an immense variety of apocalypses with even more resulting situations. A lot of post-apocalyptic writing, even in gaming, locks you into a very specific vision of the apocalypse. I think when it comes to horror gaming, the effectiveness depends in part on what people find personally horrifying. The machine allows a GM To tinker to her and/or her players’ fears about the end of the world and provides ample support for creating whatever world they end up in.

The second part of the Apocalypse Machine text is where the core Trail hack occurs. Some professions become irrelevant. Some take on new meaning. Some drives, like Antiquarian, suddenly have to do with salvaging the Earth-that-was rather than a love of 17th century British poets. This section adds/cuts/changes occupations and what abilities they might have. It completely rewrites Investigative Abilities and adds Scavenging to the General.

This is one of the few places I ran into a mental sticking place. Scavenging reflects what I find hardest in post-apocalyptic gaming. The book offers some guidance on how and how often to do Scavenging tests, but, reading through it and the scenarios, I still found myself uncertain how I’d do it in practice. I’m also not sure how I’d deal with someone who took the Farmer occupation.

Resource management is something I think of as short-term in Trail. We might limit the number of bullets or make you search for good explosives, but ultimately they do exist. And when it comes to affording things, in most parties someone has high enough credit rating to be able to buy it. For me, this is the kind of problem best solved by being in someone else’s game and seeing how they do it.

The book then goes into a re-envisioning of Trail’s mental illness (i.e. what do I do when my Sanity hits 0?), equipment charts for the post-apocalyptic setting (with Scavenging difficulties), the Afflicted (post-apocalyptic humans shunned for their conditions—conditions which an Investigator might also acquire and even find helpful, like Psychics in Fear Itself), and Mythos entities. Frankly, there’s a lot I could write about for each of these, but I want to get on to the next section.

In brief, I found each engaging and useful when considering how I might run a game. I particularly liked the Affliction ideas as a less controlled type of power compared to Mutant City Blues, but with Investigative, General, or special utility nonetheless. In particular, I thought it was important that Investigative Afflictions exist, reinforcing the GUMSHOE underpinnings.

The Scenarios

The book then includes two campaign frameworks and eight standalone scenarios. The frameworks, The Dead White World and Slaves of the Mother, provide a very concrete example of how one might run a game. They take place in Britain, one directly post-apocalypse and one several years later, with a very definite Apocalypse cause and two options for the main antagonist monsters. Individual scenarios bring in other horrors, jockeying for dominance in this new world. Sometimes the horror is plain old humans. I appreciated most the way these two frameworks laid out an apocalypse I hadn’t imagined and demonstrated the types of investigations players might undertake.

The final eight scenarios can fit much more flexibly into a custom apocalypse, or be run as one-shots. Most have a couple suggestions for the type of apocalypse in which they’d make the most sense. They reminded me a bit of Pelgrane’s recent one-page scenario contest, as each only takes up 2-4 pages, but they’re packed with ideas which could be expanded into longer play.

I found myself with less to say about this part, not because it wasn’t good but because I’d already said so much about the Apocalypse Machine. That part of the book fascinated me more because it had potentials I haven’t seen in most other post-apocalyptic games. What I appreciated most about the scenarios was that the path they followed was one which again diverges from the “standard” post-apocalyptic game settings.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, if you want to play Trail of Cthulhu but you’re tired of stopping the apocalypse and want to try something different, this is the book for you. I found it thorough in imagining how things might play out, throwing off suggestions while leaving room for your improvisation. The character-building section was a strong Trail hack. And whether or not you play the scenarios as written, reading them will help any GM who’s trying to figure out how to run post-apocalyptic Investigations vs. post-apocalyptic shoot-em-ups.

Look for Cthulhu Apocalypse in the Pelgrane booth at GenCon, though I’ve been advised that supplies are limited. I’d bet money that it sells out by Friday evening. It’s also up for pre-order on their store and comes with the PDF you can get right away.

Following on to the introduction of the Prince of Crawling Shadows, let’s look at how he weakens the icons around him. While all others involve icon on icon conflicts, the Chaos is their sinister emissary. We may never know how or when he replaced the former Prince of Shadows, but can see the poisonous ivy of his intentions undermining foundations.

The Archmage

The Crusader

The Diabolist

The Dwarf King

The Elf Queen

A mysterious stranger sells magical seeds to a few Halfling farmers in Old Town. The vegetables grow overnight, as promised, but on the second day they look wrong. An infection spreads through the soil itself, toward the Queenswood.

Political chaos breaks out in the Court of Stars. Private messages end up in the wrong hands. Scrolls detailing secret meetings arrive at participants’ doors, with blackmailing notes demanding actions or favors that make no sense.

The Court of Stars relies on its constant motion to keep it safe and adapt to external dangers. Yet if one were to chart its most recent movements, one might get the impression it was being herded toward a particular place. But those were all random and unconnected causes—weren’t they?

The Emperor

The Great Gold Wyrm

The High Druid

The High Druid receives a letter in her own handwriting. The letter pleads with the Emperor and Archmage to send aid and begs forgiveness for her stubborn and independent ways. An accompanying note reads: “You may want to send this now.”

A druid arrives with news from the south. Someone has smashed the wards on the edge of the Wild Wood which protect it against escaped demons from the southern Hellhole.

Druids and rangers moving at night report the sky more frequently obscured by enormous clouds of bats. The bats never attack, but seem to arrive at critical moments, causing them to miss turns in the path or lose the track of a mysterious animal.

The Lich King

The Orc Lord

The Priestess

A sacred item, used to hold the forces of so many gods in check, is stolen from the vaults of Santa Cora.

Fog engulfs Santa Cora, closing its harbor and making road travel perilous. The Archmage sent no warning of this strange weather, nor can prayers and spells lift it. The only open path lies toward the Wild Wood. At night, when the fog is thickest, it seems to whisper in the ears of those abroad. Can the city get word back to the Archmage?

It started with a cherubic child, speaking in tongues in the River District. From there, it spread like an infection, a torrent of tongues, speaking vaguely-demonic words for hours until they collapse exhausted and unable to speak or understand their native languages. Residents of Santa Cora consider speaking in tongues entirely natural, a phenomenon that comes upon worshipers for minutes or moments and then passes, leaving them unharmed. But this? And still the child prattles on.

The Three

Servitors and Creatures

They may not always serve the Prince, but when encountered in these games, they’re definitely his creatures. Where to find them and where they might show up in an adventure:

Bat Swarm

Bestiary, p.13. Most often used by the Prince in unnatural swarms to darken the skies (either to provide his creatures cover or to prevent adventurers from noticing something else) or to create enough chaos for an escape.

Bugbear Schemer

Bestiary, p.25. Legends say the Prince originally created the bugbears (p. 26), whether or not that’s true, he’s especially fond of the Schemers, both for their wit and their ability to disappear from a bad fight.

Cambion Assassin

Bestiary, p.30. These cloaked assassins stalk those unwise enough to interfere with the Prince’s plans. They sometimes work in teams, one as a distraction and another with the real mission. It’s said that one of them killed the Priestess, but there’s no proof that she’s dead. The Prince always handles them through an intermediary (p.33) who may be easier to trace.

Dybbuk

Bestiary, p.63. Whether in the bodies of corpses, in friends suddenly turned evil, or in ghost forms, Dybbuks create the horror and chaos which tickle the Prince’s twisted fancy.

Fungaloid

Bestiary, p.82. Loves darkness? Check. Lives (beneath) anywhere? Check. Whether as a vast network of spies or as an army ready to spring up from beneath any outdoor location, Fungaloids have an affinity with the Prince of Shadows, who embraces them as worthy servitors rather than disdaining them as most other icons (even though who employ them) do.

Gargoyle

Core book, p.224. Serve as his ears in the cities. May also be the source of strange whispers that seep into the consciousness of those who inhabit the same buildings.

Intellect Devourer/Assassin

Jorogumo

Bestiary, p.119. Masters, or mistresses, of disguise who take utter control over their victims? It’s as effective at getting secrets as the Intellect Devourer but even more cruel fun to watch the Woven spill voluntarily and the pain it causes their friends and families. Used for the Prince’s cruelest attacks. Often targets influential and wealthy.

Ogre Mages

Core book, p.240; Bestiary, p.151. They’re everything a spellcaster shouldn’t be and the Prince of Shadows loves it. It’s possible he orchestrated the original quarrel with the dark elves just so he could have more influence over this group.

Phase spider

Core book, p.244. Pay no attention to the textbox, a teleporting spider is terrifying whether or not it steals your magical tools! When allied with the Prince of Shadows, however, they often use their teleporting powers to rearrange more mundane objects in a way that sows chaos among the owners. The Prince rewards them with the magical items they so desire.

Rakshasa

Core book, p.245. Not often allied, but they may fall under his influence while working in the shadows. The Prince appreciates their shapeshifting abilities and the inherent chaos they may cause. When serving as his emissaries, they’re often repaying a debt.

Shadow Thief

Bestiary p.193. Like the phase spider, this psychic extension of a shadow dragon is a great way to cause chaos in the dark. More terrifyingly, someone classed it as a mook (are they all extensions of the same dragon? You decide!), which means *rolls* it’s not just one, you’re surrounded. Good luck with that.

End Game

The Prince’s ultimate goal is to create chaos in an icon’s area of influence and allow a challenger to take root. If adventurers make things to hot for him and his minions, he’ll simply move on to the next target—he’s got a dozen, after all.

Can adventurers act to stop what’s happening?

Depends on what kind of game you want to run. If you’re running a campaign to stop the events of the Eldritch Icons from ever occurring, you’ll want to take a page from this, er, page and focus on pursuit of the Shadow Prince and solving his mischief. Restoring his victims leaves the icons in place too strong for challengers to even make the attempt.

But if you want to find yourselves fighting Blood Druids in the Wild Wood or Voormis under the Dwarf King’s mountain, then you’ll want to keep encounters with the Prince of Shadows to a minimum. Perhaps you stop one plan only to have another succeed elsewhere. Perhaps you only hear of some of these afterward. How depressed do you want your players? These Eldritch Icons can take things to full-on Cthulhu Apocalypse levels, if you want.

To mix a little hope with your fear, have players hear some of these as stories as they encounter the first few icons you want to handle. Once they’re wise to his M.O., they turn the tables and begin collaborating with the remaining icons (or trying to) to stop the rest from even starting.

Footnotes

1. Each of the three ways is meant to act as a plot thread. All three need not be true, just the one or two that make the most sense for your game. back

Also, apologies for having been gone so long, I was working on two scenarios and some setting material over the spring. While that didn’t quite eat up all my time, it ate up all my creative brain.

This post is in the Eldritch Icons project which will weave a narrative to supplant the 13 Icons of the Dragon Empire with more sinister icons born of Weird Fiction.

When the Elf Queen departed, the heart of the Dragon Empire skipped a beat. When the blood druids took control of the Wild Wood, the Dragon Empire felt its veins turn cold. When the cathedral of Santa Cora shattered, millions flinched without knowing why. Yet the coming of the Crawling Chaos was more frightening in its silence. Not everyone agrees that the Prince of Shadows has changed; none of those who do can fix a date to it.

Nyarlathotep could not have commissioned a finer avatar than the Prince of Shadows. It’s possible that one day he simply slid into the icon’s shoes. But his enemies and rogues alike realize with growing horror that the Crawling Chaos is the Prince of Shadows…and has been for some time.

He is the author of the discord now overtaking the Dragon Empire. Through his agents, he weakened subtle points in each icon’s realm. He tampered with reality, whether through forces magical or mundane. He watches his bride, Yhoundeh with special interest.

Long before the denizens of the Shadow Port realized the change, his thousand sable tendrils had infiltrated the city. The battle against this new Prince of Shadows will not take place anywhere near its foggy streets. Rather, his influence must be fought throughout the empire.

The Crawling Chaos

Unlike Yhoundeh or Moriamis, who were only mentioned in a story or two, Nyarlathotep’s stories and avatars number in the dozens. After Cthulhu, he may be Lovecraft’s best-known creation. He was first conceived in Lovecraft’s short story of the same name and called the crawling chaos. He was not originally the “Black Pharaoh” of later imaginations but a “swarthy, slender, sinister” man of “old native blood” with the bearing of a Pharaoh.

Best known for his propensity to take on mysterious avatars or inhabit apparently inoffensive bodies, he even has a Table of Forms (Masks/Avatars) on Wikipedia which may be worth drawing on for campaign inspiration. Players may meet the Prince of Shadows in disguise and not realize until much later in the campaign.

He’s found in many Lovecraft works:

“Rats in the Walls” — early flute association but perhaps conflated a bit with Azathoth in madness.

“Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” — as a major force and messenger of other gods, with a speaking part and either a priest or second avatar as a yellow-masked figure on the Plateau of Leng.

“The Haunter of the Dark” — in the final passage, Blake seems to indicate that Nyarlathotep is the Haunter or directly connected to it.

and in the work of many Lovecraftian writers, both of short-stories and RPGs. Robert Price put together the Nyarlathotep Cycle for Chaosium, which has some of the Lovecraft stories and those by other authors. As with all the cycle books, I’m not entirely sold on Price’s assessment of the material’s relevance, though I think the stories are more on point than the Shub Niggurath Cycle stories.

And a bonus—to pull from an additional piece of Lovecraftiana, consider introducing elements or effects from Lovecraft’s story “The Crawling Chaos.” Published just a year after “Nyarlathotep,” the story is based on the co-author’s dream and simply uses the descriptor because Lovecraft really liked that turn of phrase. That’s not reason not to pretend it’s part of the canon. Perhaps the players must fight the influence of a vision-inducing drug or have disturbing visions of a future only they can prevent.

Like Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep’s cultural saturation might make him old hat to players if you call him by name:

What’s this? Oh, another Avatar of Nyarlathotep. Oh look, there’s a little cult too. It must be Tuesday…

Next time, I’ll outline some of the angles by which he undermines original Icons, who he’s working with, and what kind of beasties one might encounter when taking him on.

One of my favorite things about writing and running GUMSHOE games is that everything in them is true. Ok, maybe there aren’t really shoggoths and ghouls and vampires—or nobody will admit there are—but a wonderful part of writing and running the games is seeing how much truth and history you can sneak into them. For example, when working on my scenario for the Dracula Dossier, I managed to dig up a map of the Covent Garden area, produced only two years before my scenario was set. Or when writing “Midnight Sub Rosa” (Trail of Cthulhu, in playtests now), I dug up scanned maps from 1936 to see which rural Alabama highways were paved with what and wrote to an archive to get the exact entry for a particular day of a particular almanac.

There’s something thrilling and addictive about getting the little things right. Which is why when @summonedmonkey mentioned that Google Earth Pro is now free, I bookmarked it to check out and use. One thing it took me a moment to see because I didn’t initially RTFM is that while it’s free, you still have to enter an email address and the “license”: GEPFREE to use it.

I’d tried Google Earth years ago (wow, I’m trying to remember how many and I’m thinking at least 5) and, while it was cool, I didn’t have a reason to stick with it. But now that I’m actually creating my own scenarios and the games I’m playing are happening in real places, it’s a lot more exciting to play around in. Extra bonuses of Google Earth Pro include the ability to create movies, overlay images, measure distances, and export really high-quality images from the service. If you need something high-res, this is the way to get it. I’m honestly not sure I even need the Pro version, but everything about it is much nicer than I remember from a few years ago.

You can bet your boots I immediately went to Castle Bran and circled around it, imagining the surprisingly-lithe Count climbing headfirst down its high walls. I then discovered how to interact with all the tagged photos both in and outside the castle. It’s going to take me a while to get the hang of it, but for someone who’s never been in the castle, I got a pretty good idea what it’s like inside.

I haven’t yet gotten the movie-making function to work smoothly for me. I was able to get it to output as a movie, but it was a collection of static frames—not a flow. However I was able to record and save a tour of tagged locations from my Blood Coda adventure. Once you have Google Earth installed, you can download it and take the tour yourself.

I’d already used Google maps to help me plot things for scenarios, but I think I’m going to start using this to actually bookmark locations, maybe create more tours, and definitely scout for better locations. The excellent 3-D rendering and street view in many major cities is a great feature for trying to figure out new locations or exactly how you’d describe some point of action in the story. Normally I consider a stand-alone program a hassle if I’m able to duplicate functionality in the browser, but this has much less lag and many more features than the regular Google maps.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be scoping the architecture of Buda Castle in Hungary for its narrative potential.

In part one, we saw the fall of Santa Cora. The Priestess has not left like the Elf Queen. She is not at war like the High Druid. She is simply—missing.

Possible ways the cathedral was destroyed:

A spell of iconic magnitude shattered its crystal surface.

A vital object which held the vast magical energies of so many gods in balance was stolen from within its sacred vaults.

The Priestess herself was the key to balancing the abundance of religions. Without her, the cathedral dissolves, both symbolically and in dramatic physical dissolution.

Deliberate architectural sabotage or a rite carried out by a splinter group within the cathedral.

The state of the city:

Monks with ties to the cathedral join forces to defend the city, crossing religious and training backgrounds.

Religious leaders with a bent for apocalyptic narrative sway the city’s religious masses. Others seek to turn the situation to their deity’s advantage. A few actually give an owlbear’s ass for their congregants and can be found throughout the city helping the panicked and downtrodden.

The faithful salvage precious objects from their shrines and wings of the temple. Of course, so does every unrepentant “art collector” in Santa Cora.

World Hooks

Something is Rotten Under Santa Cora: Since ages past, the faithful have sought burial in Santa Cora. Only in its serene graveyards and ornate charnal houses could they be safe from the influence of the Lich King. For Dragon Emperors, it’s a matter of tradition. The poor in Axis, Horizon, Concord, and outlying villages, gather their pennies and hope that their family will be able to avoid the trip. The only larger necropolis in the Dragon Empire is, well, THE Necropolis.

When the Cathedral shattered and the Priestess disappeared, her protection over those who lie beneath the city faltered. The living don’t have time to think about it—yet—but the dead are now vulnerable. And it just so happens that there’s a new ghoul in town, gathering power to take on the Lich King. The Great Ghoul Mordiggian and his hyena-headed, skull-masked priests (more on them in a later post!) are here for the harvest. Whether they’re behind it or taking opportunistic advantage, they’ll have to be dealt with before the city can be restored.

Iron and stone: The shining cathedral on its verdant grounds is an abomination before the Crusader’s eldritch replacement (ugh, sorry I haven’t settled on it 100% because this is an evolving series and I’m not entirely into Nodens for it, taking votes in the comments!) or even the Crusader himself (let’s just call this person The Crusader for now). In its place, he intends to raise a building of iron and stone and bring these untamed masses to heel. When the crystal shards settle in the city, the residents find themselves ringed on land by the Crusader’s forces.

The Priestess is his prisoner, separated from her source of power within the cathedral. If adventurers can find it before the Crusader’s advance guard destroys it forever, and reunite the two, there may be a chance they can save the city.

Blood Tide: They came from the Wild Wood, Blood Druids of the Elk Goddess, moving ever-onward on their journey of forceful conversion. Whether jealous that the Priestess does not countenance their religion or zealous in stamping out all other faiths, they take on Santa Cora’s religious diversity. How do they find an in? Either by breaking into the city and performing necessary rituals or by finding a disgruntled ally on the inside. They may feel a kinship with Santa Cora’s stigmatics and offer an even greater honor to their blood-sign than the current Priestess has ever done.

A Thief in the Cathedral: How long has the Prince of Shadows actually been the Crawling Chaos? Much longer than any of this other business has been going on, that’s for sure. It’s possible that he’s the instigator of the entire eldritch shift. Whether not content in waiting for matters to progress or as the next step in his master plan, he’s instigated the theft of some item critical to holding the cathedral together.

How hard is it to steal The Priestess herself? You’ll need an even better team than Nate Ford’s, but it can be done. For a critical or sacred item, the DC’s probably much lower…say DC 40 instead of 400. It’s up to those seeking to put things right to track down this master thief and retrieve the item before it vanishes into the Prince’s vaults.

Restoring the Priestess

Can the Priestess be restored? Should she? It’s up to you to decide if she’s what this new Age in the Dragon Empire really needs.

Moriamis knows this kind of world. Whether she becomes the new Priestess or a surrogate, she may begin offering her semi-iconic favor to those in need of help. She’s dealt with bloodthirsty Druids. She lived in a land that knew the names Yog-Sothoth and Tsathoggua.

Or, in a campaign, perhaps recovering the Priestess could become an eventual plot point to restoring the world to a better age. Her light counterbalances the overwhelming darkness of these new icons.

How did Moriamis Get Here?

On the one hand, do any of the new Eldritch Icons really need an explanation? Most are goddesses or god-like figures in their own stories. But that’s where Moriamis differs. She’s presented as a mortal. Perhaps she has the enhanced lifespan of a sorceress, but she’s a woman supposedly in a time and place (Druidic-era mythic France/Averoigne). How does she come from there to the dragon empire?

One could do this both ways.

She’s a refugee from the Wild Wood. The Moriamis of Averoigne lived alongside Druids. She considered their practices unrefined, but didn’t show hostility toward them as a group. She prevents a human sacrifice by cowing them with her already-known power, not challenging them to a fight or slaughtering them in turn. The Moriamis of the Wild Wood lives alongside the Druids and, depending on the pre-Yhoundeh situation, may not even even find them distasteful—if unrefined compared to her skill. But the incursion of Yhoundeh’s Blood Druids either proved too much for her or destroyed the land she once held dear. She may have planned to stay in Santa Cora or to take a ship from there to quieter parts.

She’s from Averoigne. One could play the Eldritch Icons as an infection, a planar shift, another world that blends into and corrupts the Dragon Empire. In that case, it’s not only

Why not the White Sybil?

A few people asked why I chose Moriamis over the White Sybil. She’s an option with potential—an enigmatic and quasi-religious figure. My biggest reason was that Moriamis is a character with lines and a personality. Her choice to work for the “welfare of men and not for their bale or bane” sealed it.

If you wanted to run with the White Sybil, the attack to Santa Cora comes from within. Whether it’s the glaciers of Polarion or a chill in the hearts of the faithful that extinguishes their religious fervor, her presence mysteriously stops the religious pulse of the city.